Most professionals have several communication channels by which others can contact them when they are not physically present to receive the contact. These channels have traditionally included voice mail, facsimile transmission, and text-based electronic mail or e-mail. In addition, paging systems are commonly used as they provide convenient messaging to mobile workers. With the advent of video technology, video messages are becoming more popular as a channel of communication as well. These communications channels give associates, customers, or other message senders relatively easy access to the message receiver. They allow teams to work together while enabling closer contact with customers. Communications and messaging are the core mechanisms used by most organizations, ensuring that a wide range of business functions proceed smoothly and swiftly.
For example, voice mail has expanded to allow large groups of employees, customers, and suppliers to send, receive, store and manage telephone-based messages. The continued popularity of voice messaging as a communications channel is clear. There are more than 50 million voice mailboxes worldwide, and the voice-messaging market is growing at about 25 percent a year. The capabilities of e-mail have also been expanded with the advent of sound-capable computers, which support the use of recorded voice clips in e-mail. E-mail is also phenomenally popular, with more than 35 million electronic mailboxes in place today--a number expected to grow to more than 65 million users by 1997.
However, the heterogeneous formats and protocols of various message types used in different communication channels as well as the different systems required for receiving/managing the various messages can also lead to serious challenges for message recipients--challenges that can lower productivity and make communication a headache rather than a help.
Clearly, there is a need for an effective method of managing heterogeneous types of messages and message formats that may be received by a user. For instance, during a normal business day, a person can receive dozens of calls, faxes, voice-mail messages, and e-mail messages. Sometimes, that person may receive video and paged messages as well. The challenge of managing this steady--sometimes torrential --flow of information can be taxing for even the most patient person. Information in different forms arrives in different locations via different machines. Text-based e-mail may be received in a user's e-mail mailbox, received voice messages may be stored in a separate voice mailbox, video and paged messages stored in a video and pager mailbox, respectively, while faxed messages may be stored in paper form in a physical in-box for the recipient to pick up. The recipient must gather this incoming information from all of these various locations, review and prioritize it, then respond in the right format and in a timely manner.
This can be quite difficult when the recipient is physically remote from one or more of the mailboxes. For instance, when a business person is traveling away from the office and is unreachable via facsimile, incoming faxes can pile up back at the office and remain unanswered until that person returns to the office and has the time to examine the faxes and respond. Furthermore, if the business person is staying at a hotel where there is no analog telephone line or jack for connecting a modem, e-mail messages cannot be retrieved or answered. A similar problem occurs when the business person is in a country that has a telephone system sufficiently different from the United States telephone system so that it is incompatible with the modem or communications software used by the person.
The driving need for improved communication channels has not gone unnoticed by telecommunications firms and software companies which currently offer solutions to the messaging quandary in which many professionals presently find themselves. Many conventional solutions operate--with varying degrees of success--to combine two main communications channels, for example, voice-mail and e-mail.
One solution presently used for managing the various voice mail and e-mail message formats is typically called "unified messaging". Unified messaging systems differ in how tightly, or loosely, they join e-mail and voice-mail capabilities. For example, one unified messaging approach uses a single graphical user interface display to access both a voice mailbox and a separate e-mail mailbox. While such a system does allow the user to operate both the voice mail system and the e-mail system from a single location, this loosely coupled solution does not support access when the user is away from the location. Another problem with this type of system is that it does not provide a coordinated method of presenting, creating, managing, and filing messages, so it does little to combat the clutter of incoming information.
Another unified messaging technique consolidates both voice-mail and e-mail into one mailbox, an approach that generally requires an extensive investment in new equipment. For example, such a system might require adding voice messaging capabilities to e-mail server hardware. In addition to the high cost of new equipment, this approach frequently requires network redesign, produces a significant increase in administrative burden, and mandates user retraining. Basically, this amount of change results in a loss of existing investments in messaging equipment.
Consequently, there is a need for an effective method of storing, retrieving and managing messages which are in different formats and different media types as well as providing a means for accessing those messages, regardless of their form and the protocol used to manage and store them, from any media that users have available to them.